Heat waves renew interest in climate change

August 01, 2006

Dramatic natural phenomena such as huricanes and heat waves have renewed the mainstream media's interest in global warming, and several excellent articles have recently feature UC Berkeley climate change scientists.Higher temperatures, rising ocean, loss of snowpack forecast for state
California will become significantly hotter and drier by the end of the century, causing severe air pollution, a drop in the water supply, the melting of 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack and up to six times more heat-related deaths in major urban centers, according to a sweeping study compiled with help from respected scientists around the country.Read the full report discussed in this article.

Recent heat wave: A clue to global warming?
"The current heat waves throughout much of North America and Europe are consistent with the predictions of our global climate models," said physicist John Harte, a professor and researcher in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosystem Sciences Division. "In the future, we can expect more intense, more long-lasting, and more frequent heat waves as a consequence of global warming..."

Heat waves to rise in number, intensity
"I think you cannot attribute a single heat wave to global warming," said climate scientist Inez Fung, director of UC Berkeley's Center for Atmospheric Sciences. "But in the future there will be more of these heat waves because of global warming."